All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten Read Online Free

was Eli’s specialty—way beyond putting cookies in shoes he wouldn’t repair.
    The Jews have a word for such deeds—
mitzvoh.
    Mrs. Angel died recently. And now I can tell you even more.
    When Eli met Rachael, it was love at first sight. He proposed after knowing her two days. She turned him down. Why? Because she had cancer; she had been told she could not have children and would not live long. He insisted. He would love her until the end, whenever it came. With love as a shield against impending doom, they married. Love produced four children. And love kept them together into old age. Mrs. Angel was as good at
mitzvoh
as her husband—a conspirator in doing good deeds without getting caught at it.
    I know all this because I recently spent time talking with Angels. Eli’s son is a third-generation cobbler, running his father’s shop up on Capitol Hill in Seattle. People in the neighborhood speak of Raymond as they once spoke of his father—a real
mensch
—a worthy man. I watched him engage customers with patience and attention. Another
mitzvoh
specialist, I thought to myself.
    I spoke with Raymond’s sisters and his daughter, and saw the family scrapbooks. Eli Angel and his dear wife, Rachael, were talked about as if they were still around—still taking care of their corner of the world. I went away reminded that not all people are no damned good and the world is not going completely to hell. I went away admonished and blessed.
    The evangelist, Billy Graham, says angels are real, we just can’t see them.
    Wrong.
    I know where the real Angels are. I have seen them with my own eyes.
    Some Angels I know can fix your soles. And mend your soul at the same time.

 
     
     

    H IDE AND S EEK
    I N THE EARLY DRY DARK of an October Saturday evening, the neighborhood children are playing hide-and-seek. How long since I played hide-and-seek? Fifty years; maybe more. I remember how. I could become part of the game in a moment, if invited. Adults don’t play hide-and-seek. Not for fun, anyway. Too bad.
    Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn’t keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn’t playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. There’s
hiding
and there’s
finding
, we’d say. And he’d say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-GIVE-UP, and we’d all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn’t play with him anymore if he didn’t get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He’s probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.
    As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, “GET FOUND, KID!” out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It’s real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.
    A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn’t want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn’t need them, didn’t trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn’t say good-bye.
    He hid too well.
    Getting found would have